[EM] Sequential-Pairwise offensive & defensive strategy?
Richard Lung
voting at ukscientists.com
Fri Sep 22 10:41:09 PDT 2023
On 22/09/2023 11:12, Richard Lung wrote:
>
>
> That voters are able to make their own lists, in number order of
> choice, wresting politics from the politicians, in the nation, and in
> the world, is a fact to be welcomed, without reservation, not saddened by.
>
> It is no part of the voters job to decide alternate niceties of the
> count. There is such a thing in society, which indeed society depends
> on, called the division of labor. This applies also to election
> method, with regard to the vote, for everyone, and the count, a
> specialism, tho you wouldn’t think so from the oversights of reform
> opponents.
>
> When politicians ask for a refinement in the count of ranked choice
> votes, they are asking what lawyers call a leading question, in other
> words, a misleading question, by assuming the answer lies within a
> single member system. What is more, they are doing the first thing
> you’re not supposed to do, according to philosophy of scientific
> method. They are presuming what one is supposed to prove, by insisting
> on some elimination count procedure.
>
> FairVote has at least kept in touch with a tradition of election
> reform going back to Thomas Hare. The Hare system was successively
> improved and promoted mainly by mathematicians, invented by Andrae,
> modified by Droop and Gregory; promoted by Leonard Courtney, a
> Cambridge mathematics Tripos; and those under-appreciated reformers,
> Hoag and Hallett in the USA. As well as natural science educated HG
> Wells (including biology by TH Huxley); JFS Ross, an engineer; Enid
> Lakeman, a chemist.In short, the democratic election reform tradition
> that The Machine had virtually obliterated in a score of cities,
> including the attempt to obliterate Cambridge Massachusetts PR, with
> six anti-STV referendums in sixteen years.
>
> At the same time, post-war social choice theory applied axiomatic
> deduction to its undemocratic majority counting principle, it
> logically declared to be undemocratic (as in Theorem Arrow).
> Self-evident principles: evident to no one but oneself, Ambrose Bierce
> defined in The Devil’s dictionary. Principles cannot just be stated.
> They have to be tested. It took a century and the advent of computer
> counting, before Brian Meek could more thoro’ly rationalise the
> transfer of surplus votes in a proportional count.
>
> And elections are still two-truth systems, with different counts for
> elections and exclusions of candidates. A one-truth system, in keeping
> with the aspirations of the sciences, would require the Meek surplus
> transfer election also to be applied to the exclusion count, replacing
> its traditional “last past the post” count. Such a “binomial” count,
> for a one truth election, won’t fully work, however, without counting
> all the votes, including abstentions, telling how much the voters are
> electing or excluding candidates.
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Lung.
>
>
>
> On 21/09/2023 22:39, Michael Garman wrote:
>> Rob,
>>
>> > RCV is already poorly understood. When I moved to San Francisco in
>> 2011, I expected to grudgingly like voting in RCV elections, and I
>> expected to enjoy ranking my choices What I found instead was that
>> very few people here understand how votes are counted, and many folks
>> in my lefty political tribe here take great pride in their ignorance
>> of math and the inner workings of their electoral system, trusting
>> that the powers-that-be will count things correctly.
>>
>> This claim isn't substantiated by any of the extensive polling on the
>> subject. 85%
>> <https://www.alaskansforbetterelections.com/polling-shows-alaskan-voters-understand-ranked-choice-voting/>
>> of Alaska voters reported that it was "simple" after its first use,
>> as did at least 93%
>> <http://readme.readmedia.com/RANK-THE-VOTE-NYC-RELEASES-EDISON-RESEARCH-EXIT-POLL-ON-THE-ELECTION/17989282?utm_source=newswire&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=media_pr_emails>
>> of NYC voters in every racial group. A 2013 survey found that 89%
>> <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1002/naticivirevi.106.1.0025?seq=2> of
>> voters in California cities using IRV find it "easy."
>>
>> > As "exhibit A", I will point to the recent clown show in Alameda County
>>
>> Oh, come on. You can't possibly be suggesting that human
>> administrative error is equivalent to an inherent failure of an
>> electoral system. Even administrators of FPTP elections, as was
>> recently the case in DeKalb County, GA, make mistakes.
>> <https://www.ajc.com/politics/miscount-in-dekalb-caused-by-voting-computer-programming-errors/Z5WPVW5UKVBRTMN4TUZGZW2LLM/>
>>
>> > RCV elected the extreme candidates, rather than the compromise
>> You're seizing on outliers. All but three
>> <https://democracysos.substack.com/p/alaska-election-results-show-why>
>> of the nearly 400 IRV elections that have been conducted in the US
>> since 2004 have elected the Condorcet winner.
>>
>> MJG
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 5:26 PM Rob Lanphier <roblan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> Oh Michael...where do I begin? Your apparent move to the dark
>> side makes me sad. I realize that this intro may sound
>> condescending, but I truly don't mean it that way. I deeply
>> respect your opinion. YOU were the one who taught me about
>> "center squeeze" in 1995 or so, and made me rethink AV/PV/IRV/RCV
>> (or whatever the name of the week is). I just think you're
>> incorrect about FairVote.
>>
>> More inline below.....
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 10:32 PM Michael Ossipoff
>> <email9648742 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, that fancier Sequential Pairwise ordering method would
>> make it harder for a strategist to guess anything about the
>> comparison-order…when, instead of the candidate’s top-count,
>> it uses the sum of the top-counts of those above him on each
>> ballot.
>>
>> An extra layer of unpredictability for a would-be strategist.
>>
>> The vulnerability of the simplest-defined procedure would
>> have to be weighed against what polls & focus-groups say
>> about people’s requirement for definition-simplicity & brevity.
>>
>>
>> RCV is already poorly understood. When I moved to San Francisco
>> in 2011, I expected to grudgingly like voting in RCV elections,
>> and I expected to enjoy ranking my choices What I found instead
>> was that very few people here understand how votes are counted,
>> and many folks in my lefty political tribe here take great pride
>> in their ignorance of math and the inner workings of their
>> electoral system, trusting that the powers-that-be will count
>> things correctly.
>>
>> As "exhibit A", I will point to the recent clown show in Alameda
>> County (i.e. just a few miles east of me, on the other side of a
>> puddle known as the "San Francisco Bay"):
>> https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Alameda-County-admits-tallying-error-in-17682520.php
>> It would seem that they had been counting RCV elections wrong for
>> DECADES, and only noticed the problem in 2022. Simplicity and
>> precinct summability matters.
>>
>> Undeniably the more multi-layered & unpredictable ordering
>> procedure is more strategy-proof & better.
>>
>> Strategy-evaluation for Condorcet-complying pairwise-count
>> methods has proven to be complicated & more difficult than
>> one would expect.
>>
>>
>> This I will agree with. That is why I've hopped on the approval
>> voting bandwagon for single-winner reform. I've been
>> (more-or-less) aligned with FairVote when it comes to
>> multi-winner reform, since the many of the problems with STV
>> dissipate as the number of seats being selected for rises. For
>> example, using STV to proportionally select members of a 5-seat
>> board helps ensure diverse representation. I'm not aware of
>> anyplace in the SF Bay Area that is doing that, though. What
>> they do is divide the land inside the city/county/whatever into
>> districts, and then performs single-winner elections in each
>> district. It's horrific.
>>
>> But it now seems for sure that there are such methods that
>> are sufficiently offensive-strategy-proof or well-protected
>> from offensive-strategy. It’s only a question of how many &
>> which ones.
>>
>> The Condorcet-IRV-Runoff hybrids hold promise, with merit to
>> always be balanced with what is heard in polls & focus groups
>> about definition-brevity.
>>
>> So I’m sure that I’ll propose & recommend good Condorcet
>> versions (even if I don’t yet know which ones & how many)
>> over IRV.
>>
>> …but I’ll nonetheless include IRV among the methods that I
>> offer, because it’s better than a lot of people believe.
>> …though its merit & workability strongly depend on the
>> electorate & the candidate-lineup.
>>
>> I.e. Because it isn’t Condorcet-complying, it’s necessary
>> that the electorate aren’t timid lesser-evil giveaway voters.
>>
>>
>>
>> Back in 2018, I was heavily involved in lefty politics. The
>> mayor (Ed Lee) dropped dead while grocery shopping at a Safeway
>> that I had been to many times. He wasn't 500 years old; and he
>> seemed in good health. It was truly a surprise to everyone,
>> Suddenly, we had nearly a dozen local politicians with almost no
>> name recognition competing to be the next mayor:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_San_Francisco_mayoral_special_election
>>
>> The good news: the Condorcet winner (London Breed) won the
>> election. The bad news: it was a close election, almost
>> exclusively centered on identity politics (though YIMBY vs NIMBY
>> also played a factor). There were three well-funded candidates
>> (Breed: who was "the establishment" candidate, born and raised in
>> the Fillmore, which USED TO BE an affordable neighborhood in SF,
>> and she would become our first Black woman serving as mayor),
>> Mark Leno (who would have become our first openly gay mayor), and
>> Jane Kim (who promised to be our first Korean-American mayor).
>>
>> Having only lived here since 2011, I still considered myself
>> new(-ish) to the political scene. I asked a friend (who I met in
>> a lefty political org here in SF) who I should vote for. He said
>> "None of them. They're all corrupt. Breed's funded by Conway."
>> I didn't know who George Conway was at the time, but that didn't
>> matter. I was looking for a mainstream(-ish) candidate to put
>> SOMEWHERE in my ranking, so that I could evaluate the niche
>> candidates relative to my mainstream anchor. I pressed him: "if
>> someone was holding a gun to your head, and you had to choose
>> between Breed, Kim, or Leno, who would you choose?". He refused
>> to answer, despite how hard I pressed on the issue.
>>
>> The polls leading up to the election were spotty and difficult to
>> decipher. Most of the news coverage was about the Breed/Leno/Kim
>> food fight. Breed had served as mayor for a day or two after Ed
>> Lee died, but there was a political food fight over her running
>> for mayor after getting to be the incumbent, so she was removed
>> as mayor. I think that helped her, since (at least for me) it
>> made her a bit more sympathetic candidate, and given that the
>> rules said she should be mayor (as previous President of the
>> Board of Supervisors). Many SF voters get high and mighty about
>> "rule of law", and yet, the law was changed just as soon as a
>> Black woman took office.
>>
>> My point: I'm guessing that my activist friend was one of the
>> dreaded "bullet voters" that FairVote misinforms people about. I
>> find FairVote a flawed organization, and I specifically think
>> that founder/leader Rob Richie to be a deeply unethical (perhaps
>> even Machiavellian) political player. Approval voting finds
>> consensus candidates in a way that I think the electorate can
>> understand. "Mark all of the candidates you approve of, and the
>> candidate with the highest approval rating wins" I suspect that
>> approval voting is better at rooting out corruption than RCV, and
>> I have some more anecdotal evidence to back me up.
>>
>> St. Louis switched their mayoral elections to approval top-two.
>> The primary election selects the two candidates with the highest
>> approval rating, and the general election decides between the
>> last two. All eyes in the electoral reform community were on St.
>> Louis, and St. Louis also elected their first Black woman to be
>> their mayor:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_St._Louis_mayoral_election
>>
>> If you've never been to St. Louis, I'll break it down for you.
>> The north part of town is the flood plain at the confluence of
>> the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. It's where the poor people
>> live, and many of them are Black. South of Interstate 44 (which
>> replaced "Route 66") is where one finds the rich people, where
>> many houses were built for slaveowners (back in the day). The
>> St. Louis area has long been the fulcrum of race relations in
>> this country. For example, many folks know about the
>> predominantly Black suburb Ferguson in the flight path of STL,
>> also known as "Lombard". Famous Nazi sympathizer and aviator
>> Charles Lindbergh flew the "Spirit of St. Louis" when he made his
>> first solo transcontinental flight in 1927.
>>
>> As an outsider who has mainly been through St. Louis (many
>> times), and who has only stayed overnight in St. Louis a few
>> nights, I only have a superficial understanding of the place.
>> But I watched the Wikipedia articles about the election with an
>> eagle eye. It would seem that Lewis Cass
>> (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_E._Reed>) was the sore
>> loser, and it appeared he was starting to lead an anti-approval
>> campaign in St. Louis. However, Reed (and a couple of his
>> cronies on the Board of Aldermen) were caught on video accepting
>> bribes from undercover FBI agents. They're in prison now.
>>
>> I don't know much about Tishaura Jones, but all outside evidence
>> suggests she's a good-government type who is cleaning up the
>> politics of St. Louis. I'm hopeful she gets re-elected in 2025,
>> and that FairVote doesn't try to get approval voting replaced
>> with RCV with the help of useful idiots that will take money in
>> exchange for supporting the "correct" policies.
>>
>> But an electorate that has just enacted IRV in a referendum
>> didn’t do so because they want to rank Lesser-Evil over their
>> favorite. They enacted it because they want to rank
>> sincerely, to express & fully help their favorite.
>>
>> Let’s support Oregon’s IRV (RCV) referendum next year!
>>
>> Though IRV doesn’t meet the Condorcet Criterion, it meets
>> Mutual-Majority:
>>
>> IRV always elects the candidate of the largest faction of the
>> Mutual-Majority. …The favorite candidate of the Mutual-Majority.
>>
>> IRV didn’t “fail” in Burlington & Alaska. It did what it’s
>> supposed to do.
>>
>>
>> RCV elected the extreme candidates, rather than the compromise.
>> Sometimes, it elects the "good guy/gal" candidate (like Mary
>> Peltola), but sometimes, it elects an incompetent candidate (like
>> Bob Kiss), and it seems quite likely to me that Alaska will elect
>> an extreme right-wing Republican candidate when Peltola runs for
>> reelection in 2024. Approval (and probably STAR) will elect
>> candidates toward the center of public opinion, but RCV gets
>> random when elections get close:
>> https://electowiki.org/wiki/Yee_diagram
>>
>> Under approval and STAR, those of us who think of ourselves as
>> "left-wing" are not as likely to get lucky every so often and get
>> a minority candidate like Mary Peltola (who sadly wasn't quite
>> able to appeal to the median voter in Alaska, it seems), but
>> we're also not playing Russian roulette and potentially getting a
>> right-wing reactionary that could be funded by foreign
>> adversaries. I've heard (from someone, I can't remember who)
>> that one can see Russia from Alaska. :-)
>>
>> We don’t yet have a big Condorcet organization, or referenda,
>> initiatives or strong lobbying for it, but let’s support the
>> already ongoing enactment efforts for IRV, now named RCV.
>>
>>
>> Let's not. FairVote isn't that big (only $4.5MM/year in annual
>> revenue, based on my cursory investigation). The Center for
>> Election Science pulls in over $1MM/year, and is looking for new
>> executive director (or "CEO" as they say:
>> https://electionscience.org/about/careers-and-board/ ), and I'm
>> optimistic that they may just hire someone who is more
>> sympathetic to Condorcet consistency than the prior executive
>> director. The Equal Vote Coaltion is a small scrappy startup,
>> but seems to be using their money better than the prior two orgs
>> (and seems far more amenable and adaptable to Internet feedback
>> than either of the larger orgs). Having helped a small-ish
>> non-profit ($10MM/year in 2010 when I joined) become a larger
>> organization ($60MM/year to $70MM/year or so these days, I
>> think), I've learned not to get too enamored of (or intimidated
>> by) "big non-profits".
>>
>> If Rob Richie can prove that he's not unethical, and come to the
>> table with the rest of the electoral reform community, and debate
>> openly and honestly, then maybe I'd consider teaming up with
>> them. Perhaps the FairVote Board can fire Richie, since he
>> promised effective steps toward proportional representation, and
>> hasn't achieved that after three decades. He's only burned
>> bridges and salted the earth for effective reform efforts through
>> backroom dealing (e.g. what FairVote did in Seattle in 2022).
>>
>> As of right now, there's someone with the username "RRichie" that
>> doesn't disclose their clear conflict-of-interest on English
>> Wikipedia, but often makes very pro-RCV arguments (and
>> pro-FairVote marketing) under that name:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/RRichie
>>
>> Rob
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 18:24 Forest Simmons
>> <forest.simmons21 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> So called BTR-IRV, "Bottom Two Runoff IRV" goes along
>> those lines.
>>
>> You probably remember "Benham" that runs IRV elimination
>> until there remains a candidate undefeated by any of the
>> other remaining candidates.
>>
>> This reminds me of basing the Sequential Pairwise
>> Elimination agenda order on Top preferences ... by using
>> those preferences to "de-clone" the Borda agenda order:
>>
>> The agenda order is given by SB(X), the Sum over all
>> ballots B of the first place votes of the candidates
>> ranked above X on B.
>>
>> The larger SB(X), the later X is (on average) in the
>> rankings, and the rearlier X is in the elimination agenda.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 4:56 AM Michael Ossipoff
>> <email9648742 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> If, using voted rankings, Sequential-Pairwise’s
>> comparison-order is determined by giving, to the
>> candidates with higher top-count score, a later
>> position in the comparison-order, so that voters
>> don’t know what the comparison-order will be…
>>
>> …
>>
>> …& if voters’ knowledge of eachother’s preferences is
>> no better than it is now in political-elections…
>>
>> …
>>
>> …Does that Sequential-Pairwise election have an
>> offensive strategy with gain-expectation comparable
>> to what it would have in MinMax, RP & CSSD?
>>
>> …And, if so, is there a defensive strategy to thwart
>> or deter that offensive strategy?
>>
>> …That seems of interest because Sequential-Pairwise
>> is so much less computationally-demanding than the
>> other pairwise-count methods.
>>
>> If, using voted rankings, Sequential-Pairwise’s
>> comparison-order is determined by giving, to the
>> candidates with higher top-count score, a later
>> position in the comparison-order, so that voters
>> don’t know what the comparison-order will be…
>>
>> …
>>
>> …& if voters’ knowledge of eachother’s preferences is
>> no better than it is now in political-elections…
>>
>> …
>>
>> …Does that Sequential-Pairwise election have an
>> offensive strategy with gain-expectation comparable
>> to what it would have in MinMax, RP & CSSD?
>>
>> …And, if so, is there a defensive strategy to thwart
>> or deter that offensive strategy?
>>
>> …That seems of interest because Sequential-Pairwise
>> is so much less computationally-demanding than the
>> other pairwise-count methods.
>>
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